Sao
Paulo Jewish Film FestivalHaifa
International Film FestivalDocs
for Sale, AmsterdamWorldfest
Houston International FilmSan
Francisco Jewish Film FestivalMuseum
of Jewish HeritageHamptons
International Film FestivalColumbus
International Film and Video FestivalJewishfilm.2002

Kibbutz Megiddo
was founded in 1949 by a group of Holocaust survivors, whose children
and grandchildren still maintain the land. Creation of the kibbutz came,
however, at the expense of local Arab villagers, whose land -a village
then called Lejun- was confiscated. Locals were displaced from their homes,
their farms and their livelihoods.

Director
Ilan Yagoda first arrived at Kibbutz Megiddo in 1977 as part of his military
service and discovered that his mother had been one of the cooperative's
original group of refugee settlers. Rain
1949 chronicals his return visit 17 years later and offers
an interesting and reasonably balanced look at how locals on both sides
view the conflict.

Yagoda interviews
numerous kibbutz residents, all of whom are passionate about the land
that serves as their home. Many are sensitive to the fact that others
were displaced for their benefit. Nobody on the kibbutz denies the history
of the place, but many seem to have emotionally detached themselves from
it, for their own mental well-being as residents with no plans to leave.

One particularly
poignant moment -the most powerful sign that the place's history has not
been forgotten- has a kibbutz resident comparing the Arab expulsion from
the land to Germans driving Jews from their homes across Eastern Europe.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

"Rain
1949 is one of those disturbing documentaries that needs
to be seen...

"Rain
1949 is a catharsis of sorts, symbolized by the torrential
rains of 1949 which could never quite wash away the past: neither the
past of the Arabs who fled during the War of Independence, nor the past
of the Holocaust survivors who came to make new lives on the land so recently
-and from the standpoint of the Arabs, only temporarily- vacated.